


Coming Through It

by deadinderry



Category: Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Genre: bringing my rogice from fanfiction dot net to ao3, i mean not literally this is a new fic but you know, my SPIRIT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:20:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadinderry/pseuds/deadinderry
Summary: The clock won’t stop ticking. [immediately after being rescued]
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	Coming Through It

**Author's Note:**

> So! I've been re-reading LOTF to teach it this fall, and it has really made me want to write fanfiction. I wrote so much LOTF fanfiction on ff.net back in the day, really just doing my part to try and fight the Jack/Ralph and Roger/Simon because especially the latter makes zero sense to me, so have what was my brand back in the day: Maurice and Roger, because they killed sandcastles together.

The clock won’t stop ticking.

It’s been ages since Maurice has heard a clock, and he’s pretty sure it’s going to drive them all insane, with a possible exception of the littleuns—they all seem to be coming out of it, one by one, they either burst into tears or that look of realization just comes over their faces. Maurice is all cried out. Maurice cried and cried and cried and now he’s done, feeling like if the clock doesn’t stop he’s going to bash his own brains out. He’s one of the few that has gone and bathed. They have the option but a lot of them aren’t willing to go on their own.

Maurice went.

Roger went.

Okay, ‘everyone’s coming out of it’ is maybe an exaggeration, because maybe Roger was never really _in_ it. When they gave the option to bathe, Roger went right away. Now, like Maurice, and like the couple of littleuns who went to bathe, and like Ralph, he’s getting his hair cut by one of the sailors. Roger’s hair falls around him in dark clumps, and he looks out at the horizon just as impassively as he ever has.

Maurice considered Roger his best friend. Maurice is gregarious and friendly by nature, and he remembers, he _remembers_ , when they were still just choirboys and Roger was alone. It wasn’t alone like Simon was alone—though Maurice was friendly enough with Simon, too—it was the idea of the _challenge_ that attracted Maurice to Roger. At his core, Maurice thought that he all wanted them to be friends. He could get along with them all. He even remembers having a few conversations with _Piggy_ —

He winces and shakes that away. He’s coming out of it but he’s not ready to think about the kid that his best friend killed, because how do you? He doesn’t think that Roger’s going to face any repercussions for it because he doesn’t know if anyone’s going to say anything. Ralph might, but Roger is acting just like he was before the island. Maurice is sure that all of them are going to be jumpy and erratic for years, but Roger is fine.

He’s _fine_.

* * *

Haircuts are done now and Maurice finds Roger sitting crosslegged abovedeck. He’s not huddled in a corner like most of them. He’s just picking dirt and rocks out of the deck and chucking them overboard.

“Hey,” Maurice says. He doesn’t sit down. Roger glances up at him. “You seem fine.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Roger says. Roger has always been skinny, so he doesn’t even _look_ that different. Everyone else has scrawnied up to his level. “Nice vacation.”

“Right,” Maurice says. “Nice vacation.”

Roger looks at him, and there’s a helluva lot more understanding in there than Maurice was expecting. Most of the time, when Roger looks at you, you get the dead look. You get the dead-fish situation. Absolute flat stare. But Roger’s got emotion in there right now.

“I know it messed with you guys,” Roger says. “All of you.”

“Some of the littleuns are fine, Ithink,” Maurice says.

Roger shrugs that off, because everyone knows that the littleuns don’t count. “I get why Ralph’s going crazy,” Roger says. “I mean. Nothing like getting hunted for sport. And I guess Sam. And Eric.”

Maurice notices that Roger has moved to a pre-island way of talking—now that they’re civilized again (though the twins are not ones who have accepted anything but shaking in a corner, holding each other so close they’ve practically melded together), he’s separated their names.

“I watched you kill a kid,” Maurice says.

Roger looks at him. Shrugs. “You gonna get me in trouble for it?”

It’s not a threat, though it could definitely be taken as one. And Maurice knows that he’s not going to, because he knows that if he can push through it, maybe things can be normal again, at least for them. So instead of leaving, instead of telling someone that Roger is definitely fucked in the head and always has been, he sits down beside him.

“Figured.”


End file.
